- On-demand: 85% of on-demand training must be video lectures, you can still add text lectures, images, pdfs and multi-choice quizzes. We recommend that courses are between 1-4 hours long divided into Sections and Each section divided into bite size lectures that are between 1-10 mins (ideal 3mins). Read about file naming below. The beauty of this, is that your course(s) are available 24/7 worldwide and most courses have a long shelf life.
- In-Classroom: In-classroom training should ideally have multiple date and location options. These will be available as a dropdown for the student to choose. A lot of times, companies will see public courses and contact us asking for in-house courses. YOU are responsible for updating the dates available for your courses and to inform us if the course needs to be canceled due to low attendance at least 1 month before the course date.
- Live Virtual Training: These are very much like the in-classroom training, but they happen virtually. This is great cost saving for travel to instructors and to attendees. Instructors and attendees are required to have a good web camera, microphone and great internet connection. We setup and run the virtual environment, send invitations, certificates and follow ups.
- Blended: Blended is a mix of pre-recorded (on-demand) lectures and live virtual or in-classroom. There is no exact formula, it will depend on the topic, material and teaching style. There are great benefits to this format because it offers the best of both worlds, convenience of on-demand and the same time interaction and opportunity for questions/answers of live training. We help set up the events.
Video Requirements:
- File Type: MP4 (recommended)
- Codec: h.264/AVC (required)
- Resolution: between 640px and 3840px wide
- Bitrate : 5,000–8,000 kbps (recommended)
- Framerate: constant, 15–60 frames per second
- Aspect Ratio: We accept videos of any aspect ratio, but wider = higher quality
- For reference, a 10 min mp4 file should be around 120 MB. If your files are too big, consider downloading a free file conversion software called HandBrake. and running your files through its conversion to downsize it without losing quality (for questions about this software refer to their website, we are only providing this resource for your convenience).
Audio Requirements:
- Codec: AAC (Advanced Audio Codec)
- Sample Rate: 44.1 kHz
- Channels: 2-channel Stereo (not surround)
- A great free audio tool is called audacity. (for questions about this software refer to their website, we are only providing this resource for your convenience).
PPT Format:
When you are preparing a powerpoint for this day and age, make sure you are using HD format. Go to page setup and see if it’s set to 16:9. It’s the format of most displays these days.
Do not clutter slides with tons of text and images. Simple and clean slides are best.
For creating video lectures from your ppts, try to change slides as fast as possible. NOBODY likes to be looking at one slide forever while a voiceover is in the background. Tips: Use the pencil tool in ppt, split slides into many slides so you are flipping through them faster, mix images slides in between text to break monotony.
Color: use solid colors for backgrounds so it’s easy on the eye.
Your video file name is very important! For one, we use your ouline to put the course together in the correct order. Make sure to include Sections, Lectures and any material to be included into the course in the correct order and with the correct names in the outline and in the file name. We upload the material to the course engine and the lecture name is what the student sees. Be sure it’s spelled correctly and that it helps students get an idea for what the material they click will be about. Try to keep it to 3-4 words max. Example for a course on Project Management:
Section 1: Introduction to Project Management
1.1 – Welcome to the Course
1.2 – Definitions
1.3- Project Overview
1.4- Project Team
1.5 – Before Project Starts
1.6 – Download PM Cheatsheet (pdf)
Section 2: Initiation
2.1 – Scope Statement
2.2 – Sponsors
…..
Section 5: Conclusion
5.1 – Summary
5.2 – Thank You Message
Section 6: Quiz
6.1 – Graded Quiz
Click here to download a Course Agenda Template.
You can build your own course page content and images within the dashboard! Yes, you have full control of how your course page reads. (We reserve the right to make any changes we deem necessary to improve the users experience or to correct any violation of our terms. Your course page helps to sell the course to your prospect students. Give it some thought in order to include relevant information, that is spelled correctly and that helps them to understand quickly what is in it for them. The first thing they see is the course name, this is also very very important for your course to be found in search engines! Then the next most important thing is the Course Objective. You must answer “What will you learn” – you might want to use bullet points here. Then you will have a larger box for full course description, another box for Target Audience and finally the Curriculum. In the course description, feel free to add any pre-requisites there may be.
While we are happy to help you decide how much your course should be sold, ultimately it’s up to you! We recommend that you look at the size of your audience, the length of the program, the effort required to produce the course, the shelf life and potential revenue from that course. Then on the buyer side you must consider how much value does this represent to them, is the content easily found elsewhere? Is it highly specialized? You may also compare against other offerings in the market.
For on-demand courses, we’ve seen that $99-$149 for a 1 hour video course is generally in-line with what students are willing to pay. Of course some more specialty or advanced courses may go for way more. You do not want to price courses too cheap and be perceived as low quality. You don’t want to price it too high and not get sales. Also consider that when companies buy your courses in bulk, we give them discounts based on the number of licenses. Look at our T&C’s for more info.
For on-demand courses, generally users have a 1- year access to the course content from any device. Upon completion they earn a Petrolessons Completion Certification. For enterprise sales, when companies buy hundreds of licenses, they have a longer period to activate the license, this encourages them to buy more and not having to activate it within the same year. Once licenses are activated, they have 1 year to complete them.
For on-demand courses, you can add extra material to your video courses such as PDF, Excel, Word doc for download, images etc For quizzes, we highly recommend multiple choice quizzes with one correct answer. Here is the template excel file that you must download and use to build your quizzes. It has a tab with instructions. Quizzes can be required and also graded – we often set it to be 70% passing grade in order to receive a completion certification. Just let us know what requirements you wish to create for your course.
Yes, you can create coupons for your courses in your publisher dashboard! Although you have the option of giving a set amount discount (example $5 off), we recommend that you should always give discounts in percent value. As soon as you launch we recommend giving out coupons to get your first users and get some feedback and from reviews. Use coupons carefully!!! Do not offer your course for FREE unless it’s a key manager who can wants a trial period to evaluate before bulk purchase. Feel free to get in touch with us if you wish for us to facilitate short period trial and stop access after 1 week.
It’s FREE to publish your course(s) on Petrolessons. We only make money when we sell your courses. You choose the royalty share with Petrolessons based on what you wish for us to do to help sell your course. We look for win-win-win. The default royalty share is 50%, this means that both publishers and Petrolessons collaborate selling the courses. This allows us a margin to market your courses and grow the site, and it gives you a sizable reward for your effort, generally higher than the industry average share. Here is the form every publisher must complete.
You can monitor your sales in your dashboard and for on-demand courses you can request withdrawls as soon as you reach $100 minimum revenue and when it’s past 30-day money back guarantee. In your publisher dashboard you have an option to WITHDRAW. You funds will be sent to you via paypal (default). For large amounts we will see what’s the cheapest way to send you your funds with the least transmission fees and conversion rates. We often work with you to figure out the best way. In the rare instances where Paypal is not available in your area, we will also work with you to figure out the best way to send you your funds. Be mindful that we must try to standardize processes as much as possible, we can’t have 1000 instructors each getting paid in a different way. This would cause us to have to charge for this effort.
For in-classroom training, we will create agreements on a case by case basis. Generally, we may advance travel and hotel costs, and remaining amount is released 1 week after training (after we get students feedback and know that there are no refunds). For in-house training, we will pay when we get paid by the client.
Yes, you can edit your courses, just be aware that the course will be removed from the shop until admin approves your changes. You might want to give us heads up that you wish to make some updates to ensure we can quickly get to it and set it to LIVE again. Our support works Monday – Friday 8am to 6pm ( US Central)
The best place to find images is from your own camera! However we understand that it’s not always available. Besides the obvious solution of buying stock images on sites like depositphotos, and hundreds of other stock photo sites. You can look for what’s known as CREATIVE COMMONS (CC) images. These are royalty free images that have been given certain sharing rights by the author, often times provided that you put their credit as the author somewhere. All images used on wikepedia are CC and they usually have a link for the source where you can copy as well. Just make sure they are grating commercial rights. Youtube and Flickr also have Advanced Search filters that you can select Creative Commons images and if they say that it’s OK for commercial use, you can include them in your course. You are responsible for ensuring that your course material isn’t infringing upon anyone’s copyrights.
Webcam: Logitech C920
Mic: desktop microphones Blue Yeti or Snow ball
Software: Screen-o-matic for screen capture is affordable and easy to use. With a enough editing capabilities for basic edits plus easy to follow tutorials.
Canva: to create graphics, banners etc
Flickr and Wikepedia: for Creative Commons images.
Google Drive: all tools available from Microsoft Office but on the cloud and free with a gmail account. Very handy tool for you to plan your course anywhere from phones, tablets or computers. Plus you get space to store your course content and it’s easy to share material with us.
Dropbox: Another cloud storage we use, also very easy to send material to us via dropbox.
Portals to find outsourced video editors: upwork.com, freelancer.com
Powerpoint: slide creation
We would be sad to see you go, but you can request removal of your course with a 90-day notice to [email protected] . Any purchases completed while the course is live, will still continue having 1-year access to the content even after course is removed from the shop pages. Enterprise contracts that are still active will also continue access to the course material.
Nobody like boring courses! So there are tons of ways to create engagement with your students. You can ask questions, create challenges, added quizzes, tell stories and ask them to share theirs as well, add images, 3D animation, videos. Mix and match content. Make sure that you narration is not monotone. Add some energy to the narration. It’s OK to be funny, make mistakes etc…just keep things real!
For powerpoint, get familiar with their tools for highlighting and pointing. Also make sure not to clutter slides with too much content. Rule of thumb is 0.5 second on each slide! So a 1 hour course, should have around 120 slides. YES, if you have 5 bullet points, consider putting each one in a separate slide. Presentations are more visually interesting when the slides change often.
After about 5-8 mins of you talking, there should be some type of a break or some engagement point where the student gets to participate.
Yes! You can earn affiliate commission for selling other publishers courses as well as your course (if you are sharing 50% or higher with Petrolessons, in which case you get 10% back!) . Just head over to MY ACCOUNT > MY AFFILIATE and grab your own affiliate link, then start sharing!
Glad you asked! We always want to partner with publishers where both sides are working on selling courses. Activate your circle of influence, share your courses with your friends, family, co-workers, bosses, talk about it when you attend conferences etc. You are an author, you are sharing your knowledge and should be super proud! You can also write articles on Petrolessons and also link back from social media posts you create! We can help create graphics for your courses, just get in touch with us.
In addition, if there are prospects or regions that you believe we should target to sell your courses, feel free to let us know.
If you have any additional questions just contact us at [email protected] During business days Monday-Friday 8a-6pm (US Central) we respond the same day.
